For the trainings we wanted to do in Jordan, we drove to the capital Amman to see if our IICD-contact Mohammad could arrange some trainings for us. Without city map or address, only having the name of the building Mohammad was working in, we managed to find the place by asking many times. The credits for that go to the people of Amman, who all seemed to know the building, rather than to us. Mohammad arranges a training in Madaba, just south of Amman. In the evening he invites us home in Salt, a great Ottoman town west of Amman, where narrow market streets and renovated 19th century mansions dominate the city's appearance.

Madaba is famous for its mosaics. In the partly Christian town many Byzantine mosaics have been found, the most important being a map of Palestine with all the major towns and cities between Syria and the Nile on it, which is situated in the St George church.
For two days we teach FrontPage, Web design and Internet for teachers at the Secondary School for boys in Madaba.
Unfortunately, since the one-year contract with the telecom expired, there is no network anymore and there is only one computer with internet, so we cannot teach more than 5 to 10 teachers at a time. The teachers are very eager to learn more about using the internet and would like to learn how to make web pages for the school projects. We teach them various ways of searching the web, how search engines work, what information you can use and what not, how to update your website on the web, etc. In the FrontPage training we teach them the technical skills to create a website.

During the training days we park the car in the schoolyard. Consequently, from 7 am onwards the car is surrounded by crowds of schoolboys who knock on the car, throw little stones, try to peep inside or shout "hello". They are stunned when they see a woman entering their school.
After the trainings one of the teachers, Amjad, is showing us around in Madaba and invites us to his home. Here we eat the national Jordan dish "mansaf", a large plate with rice and meat in yoghurt sauce, which you have to roll to little balls with your (right) hand. Delicious!
The next day we had mansaf again, because one of the teachers was leaving and all the schools teachers had mansaf together on his leaving due.

Although these trainings were on a much smaller scale than those in Latvia and Romania, we enjoyed teaching such dedicated and interested teachers as those in Madaba.

Coen

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